The Making of Political Rituals in Albanian Society

Abstract

Society is often treated as a passive structure where are superposed all the ensembles of behaviours and cultures through the ideological, religious and legal rituals. Usually, researchers have the tendency of focusing mostly on the descriptions of socio-cultural phenomenons of a society, leaving asside the way in wich these rituals reach the consensus or the resistance of the social group where are distributed. Whatever religion, culture, law or ideology to be constructed must invent several rituals which should conform to the social structures of society. Before the ideology is constituted, the social rituals should be recognized as such by the members of society, who give to these rituals a specific shape that makes sense to them. Therefore, we can say that the constituation of a given ideology, religion, law or ideology depends not only on the will of the leader who has in control it’s modes of production, but also in the interaction between the ideology itself and the way in wich it is translated on the modes of comprehension of society. In this work I’ll try to explain how the religious worships during the Ottoman Empire are transformed and adapted as politico-ideological in Enver Hoxha’s Despotistic regime in Albania. This will be realized by concentrating on the idea that ideological and social rituals in general, to exist they should firstly be recognized as such by the members of society in which these rituals will be routinized.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2013.v2n8p179